Archive for September, 2014

Office 21 is a quick, card game where players are trying to have their ‘office’ of workers generate exactly $21 million profit, i.e. their values add up to 21. Players take turns adding one worker (card) from their hand of three into their set of cards on the table (office). As well as having different values, each card has a special effect too, such as removing a card from your own office, turning an opponent’s card face-down, looking at the next card on the draw pile and choosing to take it or put it back, and so on.

So, cards you play can be used to alter other player’s offices as well as your own office, which means there will be plenty of spoiling other players’ attempts, and subsequent petty revenge (which will be entertaining). A few cards interact with each other automatically; for example, The Boss and Secretary get on very well indeed. If a Boss card is showing and a Secretary card is played by someone then both cards are turned face down whilst they are, erm, occupied. Face-down cards do not count towards your total (but will if they get turned back up again).

There are several ways in which a game can end, and the way it ends determines how the winner is judged. A player wins if their office has a total of exactly 21 and still has 21 when it is their next turn – so other players get one chance to mess with their office and/or win a better way. However, if a player plays a Tax Man card, play continues until that Tax Man is reached again (he could get removed) then it’s the player with the lowest total who wins. Any player who exceeds a total of 21 is automatically out, so a player can win if they’re the last man standing.

Attack on Monster is a game of of knowing when to fight, knowing when to run, and knowing when to tell your friends you’ll stay with them to the bitter end and then immediately deserting them so they get killed and you don’t.

The game board consists of a changing row of location cards. The players start on a location and there is a large monster bearing down on them. Players simultaneously show if they are going to run (away from the monster to the next location), or stay where they are. After players move or stay, the monster moves up to 2 locations and fights the first group of players it meets. If the number of players (plus any bonuses/penalties for equipment and the location’s effects) is greater than the monster’s strength, the monster is killed which earns those players an equipment card and some Victory Points (VPs); otherwise, all players are killed by the monster. The good news is each player has 3 figures (meeple) so when one gets eaten, the next enters play. Read the rest of this entry »

Theseus is a really interesting, tactical game – you can read my review here. Bots is an expansion that adds a new faction to pick from. Apart from that, I haven’t seen any other details about it at the moment. However, I like the main game Theseus so I’m interested in an expansion for it.

Portal Games have a pre-order page for Spiel on their site which can be reached using this shortlink: bga.me/portal14

For more Spiel 2014 previews, check out my Spiel 2014 Previews page which lists the games on my radar with links to their previews too.

Royals is a new eurogame by the designer of last year’s Triassic Terror and the excellent Francis Drake too. The board shows 4 European countries and each has various titled positions (Baron, King, etc.) which players can earn. Each turn, you draw 3 country cards, or 1 country and 1 intrigue card. Similar to the game mechanic in Ticket to Ride, country cards are drawn from 3 face-up cards or unseen off the draw deck.

After drawing cards, you can choose to play country cards to take control of a position – each position shows how many cards matching the relevant country are required. If another player already holds the position, you must play an intrigue card that shows the country as well (each intrigue card shows 2 different countries).

When taking control of a position, you place a cube of your colour on that position on the board (moving any previous owner’s cube to the city space next to the position). In addition, any player that takes control of a position also places a cube on the tile next to the board that shows the same position – these cubes accumulate throughout the game. Read the rest of this entry »

Deus is a game by Sébastien Dujardin (co-designer of Troyes and Tournay). It’s a game of ancient civilisation building, whilst trying to appease the gods, and contains some interesting sounding game mechanics.

The board is made up of a number of hex tiles (well, they’re kind of rounded-off hexagons) which contain 7 regions on each consisting of 4 land regions (producing wood, stone, wheat and clay), 2 water regions, and 1 barbarian village. The layout on each tile is slightly different, and the tiles are placed together randomly each game giving some variety in replay.

Each player has a player board showing 6 coloured columns which each relate to a type of wooden building: civil, scientific, maritime (ships), military (armies), production, and temple. You start with some buildings on each column, cash, Victory Points (VPs), resources, as well as drawing 5 building cards from the common deck.

El Gaucho is a eurogame of cattle ranching. From reading the rules, it sound like a fresh mix of game mechanics is a light, fast game which appeals to me. On the board is a pen for rolling dice, rows of cows to be gained in the paddock, and special action areas.

Each round, a set of dice are rolled and players take turns to take two of these dice and using them to take actions. One action is to use the dice to gain cows from the paddock. If a player uses dice whose total exactly matches the large number on the cow’s tile, they place one of their workers (Gauchos) on the tile standing up. A player can place a Gaucho lying down on a tile if their dice matches the smaller (and easier to obtain) number on the tile, but it takes a second dice matching this small number to then make that Gaucho stand up.

At the end of a round, if a row of cows in the paddock has a Gaucho on everyone one (standing up or lying down), cow tiles with Gauchos standing-up on them are claimed by their owning players (and cow tiles with lying -down Gauchos on them remain where they are as new cow tiles are added to their row). When a player gains cows, they place them in rows according to their type and new tiles are always added to the right of any existing row. However, there is a catch: Cows placed in ascending or descending numerical order are fine but, if a newly placed cow breaks this sequence, the current row of cows must be sold immediately, and then the remaining cows to be added start a new row. For example, if you already have a row of brown cows numbered 12-8-6 and have brown cows numbered 9 and 5 to add, you could add the 5 first (making the row 12-8-6-5 and then adding the 9 means you must sell the row as it would break the descending value sequence. When sold, the amount of Pesos earned is equal to the number of cow tiles being sold multiplied by the highest single tile value. Read the rest of this entry »

Orléans is a new game from dlp games who released the highly-entertaining game Citrus last year. Orléans combines multiple game mechanics such as bag-building, meeple movement, and worker placement.

Each player has a bag of character tokens (farmers, knights, craftsmen, etc.) and players can add more tokens to their bag during the game. At the start of each round, players draw some characters from their bag, and each player places them on their player boards in specific combinations to activate actions. Most actions require 2 or 3 characters, so I can see there will be some tricky choices deciding in which combinations to allocate the drawn characters each turn. Players can part-fill actions and complete them on a later turn too.

There are lots of different actions to choose from. Many add a character to your bag and then advance you along the matching track on the central game board which give a benefit – the further along the track you are, the better the benefit. For example, adding a boatman to your bag advances you along the boatman track which earns you coins. Adding a knight to your bag also advances you along the knight track which allows you to draw more characters at the start of each round. Some are a bit different such as adding a trader to your bag allows you to add one of the special action tiles to your player board which you can activate, such as creating goods, or using a boatman character as a craftsman, farmer, or trader. Read the rest of this entry »

(Note: I assume this is for release at Spiel as it’s listed as a 2014 game on Michael Schacht’s web site.)

Mogul is a game by Michael Schacht (Zooloretto) which was released in 2002 but has had some additions for the new release too. It’s a eurogame with a train theme and uses the excellent central game mechanic found in No Thanks.

The game board shows several interlinked (coloured) railway lines with locations for depots along them and players start with some shares in some of the lines and some chips. Share cards show the colour of the line they are shares in, plus they also show a different line’s colour in a box too (I’ll call this their ‘second colour’).

Each round, a stock card is revealed to be auctioned. First, all players earn $1 for each share card they have that matches the revealed share card. Then, players take turns to either place one of their chips in the centre (so they remain in the auction), or pass (which means they’re out of the auction but take all the chips placed so far).

When only one player remains, they can either (a) take the share card, or (b) either sell all the shares they have matching the auctioned card’s second colour, or place one of their depots on the line matching the auctioned card’s second colour. Shares values are based on how many matching shares other player’s currently own. The runner-up in the auction gets to perform the action (a or b) that the auction winner did not perform. Read the rest of this entry »

Dirk Henn was probably the first designer that I followed as Alhambra was one of the first euro board games I played and then I found I really liked his next games, such as Eketorp, Colonia, Shogun and Timbuktu.

Over recent years, I’ve been disappointed that his games have been re-themes or re-releases of his previous designs; however, this year sees the release of a completely new game called Neptun which looks like a simple eurogame but with interesting game mechanics and a Roman merchant theme.

The game lasts 3 game rounds and each game round consists of 5 rounds of acquiring contracts followed by 5 rounds of fulfilling contracts.

Acquire ContractsCards are laid out in a grid with one row for each type of card (city cards, goods cards and oar cards) and one more column than the number of players. On their turn, a player takes 1 column of cards (one card of each type); however, there’s a neat game mechanic here to make things trickier.

A player can take any 1 of the face-up columns of cards (if there are any), or they can choose to reveal the next face-down column. However, revealing a column means they can no longer take any previous column – so their choice is now to take the newly revealed column, or reveal the next and take that, and so on. This adds an element of push-your-luck, plus the more columns you reveal the more information you give to other players. Read the rest of this entry »

The first thing that strikes you about Nations is that it’s a civilisation game without a geographic board. Instead, Nations’ more abstracted approach to a civ-themed game delivers a very tight, and different, game for gamers.

Each player has a board showing a limited number of ‘slots’ where cards can be placed. Each slot is colour-coded to show which type(s) of cards (Buildings/Military, Advisor, Colony, and Wonders) can be placed there. There are also two central boards: The progress board (showing the cards available for purchase this round where the row dictates the cost) and the main game board (showing the players’ military strength/stability/total books, plus events, available architects, etc.)

During the game, players take turns to either: Buy 1 card, Deploy 1 worker, or Hire 1 architect to build a wonder. A purchased card must be immediately placed on your player board on a matching coloured slot – building over an existing card if necessary. This adds tension to the game because, not only do you need to figure out which cards will work well with your existing cards, but you need to consider what cards your opponents will be aiming for too. Also, the limited number of slots really makes you think about how to achieve lots with relatively little. (Note that Blue and Red cards share the same slots so more military means fewer buildings and vice versa.) Read the rest of this entry »